Just as he did last fall, Donald Trump is responding to a horrific act of political violence not by calling for sensible gun laws, but by… trying to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air.
The shooting at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner Saturday night has left an already rattled nation feeling more unsettled than ever.
Naturally, the president and first lady took the opportunity to rehash a decade-old vendetta against Kimmel, a long-time Trump critic.
While investigators were busy looking into the alleged shooter and his possible motivations, both Trumps took to social media to call for the host’s firing because of a joke he made last week on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
On Thursday, two full days before the WHCD, Kimmel staged a fake roast on the show. Standing at a podium, he cracked jokes like the ones that used to get told at the WHCD every year before everyone (including the Washington press corps) became terrified of political comedy.
“Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” Kimmel said.
This was obviously a crack about 1. Trump’s age and visibly declining health (the bit also included a punchline about the poorly disguised bruise on Trump’s hand); and 2. Melania’s apparent disdain for her husband.
But who needs context when selective outrage is so much easier to understand?
On the platform formerly known as Twitter, Melania claimed that “Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country.” She also said the comedian, who recently extended his contract at ABC, “shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate…Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.”
The president also weighed in via his preferred platform, Truth Social, saying that while he “normally would not be responsive to anything” Kimmel said (LOL), this time the comedian had gone “beyond the pale.”
“Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” Trump wrote.
Karoline Leavitt also mentioned Kimmel Monday in a lengthy diatribe about dangerous political rhetoric (which, naturally, made no mention of the various times in the last few months that her boss has celebrated the deaths of his critics or called for the destruction of an entire country).
Trump loyalist and FCC chair Brendan Carr, spurred to action by fast-tracked complaints from a conservative legal group, managed to get Kimmel yanked off the air for a few days in September. On Tuesday, the FCC ordered Disney to submit to early reviews of its broadcast TV licenses, a process which will inevitably put more pressure on ABC to punish Kimmel.
This time around, though, Trump’s attempt to silence dissent seems less likely to work (even if his lackeys are hard at work).
Disney and ABC have so far made no comment, and the conservative station owners who denounced him last fall have also been silent. Kimmel was on the air Monday night across the country and, for his part, appears entirely unfazed by Trump’s latest round of attacks.
He even repeated the quip that provoked Trump’s ire, explaining that it was “a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together…. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that I’ve been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence in particular.”
He continued, “I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband.”
Kimmel probably has good reason not to take the drummed-up outrage too seriously. Last time this happened, about 4 million people canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in protest, and the comedian was quickly reinstated. His return episode, featuring a 28-minute monologue about the importance of free speech, generated a record audience.
At the time, a large majority of Americans opposed government attempts to get shows canceled.
That was six months ago, when Trump’s approval rating was still above 40% and gas was less than $4 a gallon. More recent attempts to apply political pressure to late-night comedians have also backfired, like the time Colbert was blocked from airing an interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico that subsequently went viral.
The president’s problem — or at least one of them — is that his poll numbers are only tracking downward, and there are only so many late-night hosts left to silence. Sooner or later, he might want to consider a new tactic.
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian.
Since the Disney boycott debacle, Jimmy Kimmel has been untouchable. Nothing T says will affect him, other than providing more material for jokes. The T’s are essentially heckling Kimmel in social media & the press. Any comedian who’s achieved even a moderate level of success has had years of experience dealing with hecklers. If you heckle a comedian on Kimmel’s level, it’s like a drunk guy climbing into the ring with an MMA champion (“You’re not so tough!”). It will not end well for you!
"Melania claimed that “Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country."
She'd better look a damned sight closer to home for the greatest divider of our country. So much projection sticks in the throat. It's a violation of First Amendment freedom of speech to effectively holler "off with his head" like the Red Queen from Alice in Wnderland. If you don't like what someone is saying, there are choices. 1/ Stop listening. 2/ Stop behaving offensively so that there'll be nothing to be said about you. Childish reation to criticism shows a shallow person.